Europa Strike (26 page)

But it proved to be only a temporary setback for the Imperial Japanese Navy. The invasion force returned, heavily reinforced, including support from two fleet carriers and several cruisers and destroyers detached from Admiral Nagumo's attack force still en route from the Pearl Harbor attack.

The Americans had tried to organize a relief expedition; in fact, all three available U.S. Pacific Fleet carrier task forces had been ordered to the relief of Wake. But over-caution, breakdowns, fueling problems, and administrative confusion caused by the summary dismissal of the CINC-PAC blamed for the Pearl disaster had all resulted in the fleet being ordered to turn back just 425 miles from beleaguered Wake. There would be no relief force.

The Wake defense force, augmented by Marine ground crew personnel once the last fighter was disabled, plus a number of civilian construction workers, fought on heroically, but at 0235 hours on December 23, Japanese forces made it ashore at several points and began reducing Marine defenses one by one. At 0500 hours, Commander Cunningham sent his final message to Pearl: “The enemy is on the island. The issue is in doubt.”

Further resistance was pointless, given that no help would be coming. Cunningham gave Devereaux permission to surrender; the major had then walked all over the island, accompanied by a Japanese officer under a white flag, persuading his Marines to surrender one strongpoint at a time.

Japanese losses in the Wake action were not known for sure, but numbered at least nine hundred dead, and well over twice that many wounded. The Americans lost 121 dead; 470 military personnel and 1,146 civilians were taken prisoner—none too gently, as it happened. The Japanese were still stinging from their earlier setback, and several prisoners were summarily executed.

Major Devereaux spent the next four years in a Japanese POW camp in China.

With Wake fallen, the Japanese conquest of the Philippines had been assured.

So much had Chesty been able to describe to Jeff, though he'd already been familiar with the general history, of course. Marines were fanatics when it came to their own history and their own heroes. What the tale had not prepared him for, however, was the emotional reality of a similar strategic situation—a tiny garrison on an isolated outpost, far, far from any possibility of help.

And there would be no relief expedition.

Devereaux's decision. It might be best to surrender
now
, before another Marine died. There was little advantage to be won by holding out, by playing the strutting, macho hero and fighting to the death. Gallant last stands generally took place only when the enemy didn't give the defenders any choice—the Alamo, the Little Bighorn, Camerone.

There was little point in adding Cadmus Crater to that bloody, if heroic, list.

In Jeff's mind, though, there was a serious question as to whether they
could
surrender. The Chinese forces had been hit pretty hard these past six days. Another ship might be here within the week, but did the Chinese forces now on Europa have the supplies and space to take care of almost seventy Marines and civilians? He doubted it. The Marines now held nine POWs themselves, Chinese soldiers captured in the various actions in and around Cadmus Crater. They couldn't be given the run of the base, certainly, nor could they be left in one of the sheds on the surface. At the moment, they were crammed into two storage compartments inside the E-DARES facility, requiring a constant guard on both rooms, and an extra security detail each time food was delivered, or when it was time to walk the prisoners, two at a time, down the passageway to the head to relieve themselves or shower. Four of the prisoners were wounded, requiring a lot of Doc McCall's time, and more security each time there was a dressing change or time for medication.

It was bad enough that Jeff honestly wasn't sure what they would be able to do if they took many more prisoners; Kaminski had half-jokingly suggested yesterday that the Charlies could win the fight right now simply by surrendering.

He didn't think the Chinese CO would be any happier at having to accommodate forty-one Marine POWs. He certainly wasn't going to trust the guy unless he received some pretty damned strong assurances.

He looked at his staff, weighing the expressions, which ranged from Biehl's dour pessimism to Kaminski's self-assured acceptance of whatever the next order might be.

“Captain Melendez,” he said. “You're the XO. Your assessment?”

“Ski's right. The men will follow you to hell right now, skipper. I think we hunker down, ride it out, and see what Earth can deliver. If they can't deliver, we get the best terms we can, rather than spending any more lives for this ice ball than we have to.”

“That's right, sir,” Graham said. “Earth doesn't care. Why should we?”

“Because we're
Marines
, damn it!” Jeff flared. “Because we have a job to do, and we're damned well going to
do
it!” He paused, breathing hard. It was worrisome to know that the enlisted men would follow him to hell, but that he was going to have to convince his officers. “Look. We have to buy more time for the politicians, okay? Maybe they can pull a negotiated settlement out of the hat. If that settlement means we surrender and accept a ride home in a Chinese transport, so be it.

“But until I receive direct orders to cease fire and turn my command over to my counterpart out there, I will
not
surrender! Do we have an understanding, gentlemen?”

A mumbled chorus of “yessirs” and “aye, ayes” sounded from the others. There was little enthusiasm, and for a moment, Jeff was tempted to pull the old boot camp routine: “I can't hear you!”

But that kind of artificial rah-rah would have been out of place, even insulting. These men knew what the score was, and, in the U.S. military, at least, it wasn't enough that men follow orders blindly.

They had to follow out of conviction.

“My office will be open, if any of you want to discuss this privately,” he said. “Let's adjourn. I'm hungry.”

It was a weak joke. They were all hungry, going on the same half rations as the men. Hell, at this rate it wouldn't be long before the Charlies starved them out, with or without the help of another Chinese warship.

There had to be another way, another option.
Had
to be…

The problem was going to be finding it.

 

24
OCTOBER
, 2067

 

Senate Floor
,

Capitol Building, Washington DC

1420 hours EDT

 

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, I have been accused of bias in this matter, of letting my old loyalties, my old brotherhood, stand in the way of what is perceived by a majority within this august body as a
good
thing, a
positive
thing.”

Senator Carmen Fuentes was just getting warmed up.

She'd never participated in a filibuster before, that uniquely American expression of politics: the chance to stand up in front of her fellow senators and simply
talk—
talk for hour upon hour, refusing to yield, holding the floor against the opposition for the simple purpose of preventing a motion for a vote.

“It's true that I am a Marine. I retired from the Corps twelve years ago, but I am still a Marine. More, I am a blood member of that small and select brotherhood, beginning a century ago with Major John Glenn…a
spacefaring
Marine, who has also had the honor to be elected to this body. Major Glenn started something, you see, something that he himself could not have imagined at the time. A Marine fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, first American to orbit the Earth, ultimately a senator from Ohio who then became the first man to return to space at the age of seventy-seven…when he was what was back then considered
old
.

“Since Glenn's day, there have been fourteen other Marines who have also flown in space, and also served in the U.S. Senate.”

She spoke easily, dropping the facts and figures without effort, without using notes. Though her colleagues couldn't tell the fact, she was enjoying the use of a new and particularly high-tech toy, one that promised to vastly extend the power and scope of all speechmaking on the Hill. Truly great orators—the Websters and Disraelis and Churchills—were rarities in every century; it didn't help when you were shuffling papers or note cards or, worse, trying to talk off the top of your head, making it up as you went along and trying to have the result be reasonably coherent.

Carmen, however, was wearing a contact display, a soft plastic contact lens in her right eye which served as a kind of HUD projecting scrolling words and data directly onto her retina.

At the other end of her in-eye prompter was Abe, her personal AI secretary resident within her PAD. She'd stored large pieces of the speech she wanted to give, along with all the facts and figures she needed to back up her words. Abe was arranging those words as she spoke, listening to her talk, and shaping suggestions for new topics, new ideas, new directions to go in.

She could ignore the scrolling words if she wished, choose any of a variety of possible directions to go in, and pretty much make up the speech as she went on, but it was a great way to avoid getting stuck, and wondering what the hell to say next. She could trust Abe to stay a step or two ahead of her, arranging the data she needed, even making suggestions as to what she might want to talk about next.

“So I suppose I am a member of an extremely small and elite society.
Elite
That's something of a dirty word these days, I know. None of us is supposed to be any better than anyone else…at anything. But I'm here to tell you today that that is a lie, and a pernicious one. There are some men and women, a select few, better than others in an important way—young men and women willing to put themselves in harm's way, willing to lay down their very
lives
to serve the interests of their families and fellow Americans, their country, and their government.

“And we, distinguished colleagues, have a miserable record in our attempts at repayment of a debt that we can never truly begin to repay. How often, I ask you, have we accepted the sacrifices made by these excellent young Americans, only to trample on what they have given us?

“My God, look at the record! Look at it, and weep at how politics has repaid the sacrifice in lives and blood made by our children! A century ago, Congress sent American troops to Vietnam, then decided to abandon the country to its own devices, after over fifty thousand Americans—including, I might add, thirteen thousand Marines—had been sacrificed there.

“In Beirut, in 1983, we sent the Marines in with orders that said they couldn't even load their weapons, couldn't even protect themselves in the middle of a war. Two hundred thirty-eight Marines were killed, and our thanks was to tacitly admit defeat, pull out, and abandon the peace that they had already attempted to purchase with their blood.

“The same happened in Somalia in 1993. The same in Ceylon in '02. The same in Israel, in '06. In Taiwan.

“It's now a full century since Vietnam, and we are still doing the same—we, the men and women in this assembly, still despicably sacrificing our young on the altars of expediency, of political maneuvering and ‘sending messages,' of wars fought with no clear goals, no certain outcome, and no long-term gain.

“My distinguished colleague from New York spoke at length yesterday about the need for peace. As it happens, I agree with him. As a soldier, I am the
first
to speak for peace, because no one can hate war more than the person who must fight in it.

“But where I part company from the senator from New York is the idea that our young men and women, those whom we have already sent across this Solar System to serve on the barren, ice-locked seas of a world more alien than any of us here can possibly imagine—that these young people are expendable. That we can shrug our shoulders, say it was a mistake, and leave them to their fate because to do otherwise would be
inconvenient
, would
upset the delicate process
of peace negotiations with Beijing, would send the
wrong message
to the People's Republic…”

She was pouring scorn into the phrases, as Abe dredged them up from his recording of Senator Kellerman's Senate speech yesterday. She could feel the uncomfortable shifting of the senators listening to her, an icy reserve as cold in its way as the surface of Europa. They didn't like having their noses rubbed in it, but Carmen Fuentes had never backed down from a fight, and she wasn't about to begin doing so now.

“My distinguished colleague has spoken of a peace initiative, of extending the olive branch to our counterparts in Beijing. All of that is well and good. But I remind this body that at this moment, a handful of our young people, the future of this nation—perhaps future members of this Senate—are fighting on Europa. Two hundred forty-eight have died so far, forty of them on the moon, their blood staining that cold blue ice. And I must stand here as their representative, asking if their blood has been shed in vain.

“I'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen of the Senate. As a Marine, I still hold one promise sacred above all others: that I will never, under any circumstances, abandon a fellow Marine.

“I will not abandon my brothers and sisters, who stand now, at our orders, on the icy shores of the Europan sea.”

As she spoke, a green light winked on in her eye, a quick pulse that flickered eight or ten times, then vanished. And Senator Carmen Fuentes laughed, startling several of the senators nearest her, who were reading e-books or working on their PADs.

“In fact, ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, I must tell you now that all we can do is support our people out there. It is history that will judge us here. But it is that brave handful of Marines on Europa who will determine the character of this, what we are pleased to call our civilization, for the next one hundred years.”